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September 25, 2014
Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu
Featured, Muay Thai, Sylvie's Tips, Technique

Sylvie’s Tips – Muay Thai Tips, Techniques & Helps from Thailand

Sylvie's Tips - Muay Thai Tips, Techniques and Helps from Thailand

 

This is a new feature I’m going to try my hand at. I’ve got a lot on my plate out here, but it feels like it would be a shame to waste some of the small technical Muay Thai know-hows I’ve run into, so I’m going to try to stop and film them in short segments when I come across a new one. Sometimes it will be something I’ve discovered in my own struggle to synthesize all the amazing technique that is surrounding me, but mostly I hope it is short pieces of instructions or help from those teaching me. I’m a little shy with the camera, and it always feels like an imposition to ask a Kru to stop and be filmed – but I’ll get over it.  The cost of shyness is too high in this case. There is a wealth of technique in Thailand – even in a single gym there is a great variety of fighting styles and approaches. So this is my attempt to document and share some of it.

I struggled somewhat over what to call these segments because they’re not always my tips and for the most part I’m looking for the instructors themselves to demo and teach the techniques – I’m just the collector and the vector of the information.  I am by no means an expert, but this video series isn’t about experts. Thailand is filled with non-expert experts. The lowliest guy at the gym, who you may never pay attention to and who has no social standing may be an absolute treasure trove of knowledge.  (Likewise, the dude who won’t leave you alone in trying to advise you on everything might be an idiot.)  So here’s to passing on whatever I can to more viewers, which was the original purpose of my YouTube channel when I first began filming Master K.

I’ll be putting the videos in a YouTube Playlist for convenience (below), and they’ll be published here on 8limbs.us as they are created (you can subscribe below!), but to start out this post will have a few. It’s a feature in the process of its own evolution. I’ve also added a few older videos to the Playlist that fit within the context of this feature, and some unpublished videos of the past.

The Sylvie’s Tips Playlist

 

A Few Recently Filmed Entries:


I talk about the importance of hip placement in Thai Clinch

 


Bank Petchrungruang shows the palm-to-palm hand position in a Muay Thai clinch squeeze – this improved my clinch a great deal.


Kru Hart Petchrungruang demonstrates the art of push in the Thai Clinch – this basic shoving has really started to help my inside game. It works both defensively and offensively.


Adding a little padding to your Muay Thai wrap

I show how whipping the arm straight down on the kick increases relaxation and speed for me.

 

And More

For those looking for more detailed instruction and techniques I put together a series of posts with extensive video (whole sessions) when training with Sakmongkol in February of 2014. If you have patience you can read and view them all here: Training with Sakmongkol.

I also tried to sum up what I learned in that visit to Pattaya, a visit that inspired me to move down here, in 15 New Techniques That Will Improve Your Muay Thai

You can support this content: Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu on Patreon

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Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu

The Author Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu

A 103 lb. (46 kg) female Muay Thai fighter. Originally I trained under Kumron Vaitayanon (Master K) and Kaensak sor. Ploenjit in New Jersey. I then moved to Thailand to train and fight full time in April of 2012, devoting myself to fighting 100 Thai fights, as well as blogging full time. Having surpassed 100 fights in 3 years here, my new goal is to fight an impossible 200 times in Thailand, as much as I possibly can, and to continue to write my experience.

1 Comment

  • bruno bellouin
    July 26, 2016 8:20 pm

    Tout simplement Merci….;)

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Soidao and Jaeda - Rangsit Stadium - May 2000

Women in Lumpinee, Thai Female Fighters in the 1990s, Rangsit History

One of the more limiting things as a female Muay Thai fighter is that we have no real history, no archived past to attach ourselves to, to anchor our passion and propel us to greater achievements. We have the names and photos of western women with lots of belts, in recent times, and very few videos, but reach beyond a decade or so and the record of female Muay Thai just falls off into mist. And in terms of Thai female fighters, anything prior to 1998 is extremely obscure and subject to the dubious or incomplete aspects of oral accounts.

The Bloodied Faces of Women - Women's War Face - New Beauty

Celebrating the Female Face – Bloody Face Photos from Female Fighters

Ladies, Send in Your Bloodied Face Fighter Photos This is a call for female fighters to send me photos of their own bloodied face, to join a wall of women who have had their faces bloodied in fights. This is really in answer to the absence of the bloodied female face in fight media, something which actively works to segregate women, aesthetically, as something less than “real” fighters. The bloodied male face is celebrated in media; it symbolizes male toughness, aggression, commitment. But to a large degree the female fighter face has been whitewashed in a sea of beauty shots

First Female Boston Marathon Runner 1966

Women Making History and the Selfish Endeavor – 1966

There’s a wonderful quote by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “Well behaved women rarely make history.” While this conjures, for me, an image of brazen women steeling themselves against injustices to act out in defiance, this also includes any women who pushes against limitations. Even quietly. Even in secret. To behave means to do what is expected, to obey the rules and color inside the lines. Some women make history not by trying to make history, but simply by trying to take part in what makes them happy, before history has decided that was the right thing. That’s what Roberta “Bobbi” Gibb did when

Under the Bottom Rope - Sylvie and sakyant-001

Stories of The Bottom Rope

I’ve written about the bottom rope before (articles at bottom) and this is my response to it coming up again recently. Interestingly, it was reintroduced by an American coach who was saying that his female fighters have always and will always go over the top rope, even in Thailand. Unfortunately, he had some other things to say about why he encourages his fighters to disregard this custom that, to me, smack of a particular racism and sexism that fantasizes about the exploited Thai female body that wasn’t something I could get behind. Firstly, a lot of people in the west

sweating woman big

Act Like It – Confidence In A Performance Culture

Either Side of the Ropes Something happens when a woman steps into the ring.  It’s not universal and I cannot speak for everybody,  but I’ve both witnessed this phenomenon on many occasions in other women and I’ve experienced it myself.  Women who are fantastic in training – padwork, bagwork, shadowboxing all with really sharp technique – seem to fall apart in sparring or in fights.  I’ve seen men do the exact opposite, looking pretty sloppy and borderline bad in training and then suddenly get it together when within the ropes of the ring.  What the hell is this? The most

record book

Training At O. Meekhun Muay Thai Gym with Phetjee Jaa – Pattaya

I was very excited and shocked to learn that my Muay Thai hero, the 12-year-old phenomenon Phetjeejaa O. Meekhun, trains at her family gym just a 30 second walk through a chicken farm from where I’ve been training every day for the last month here in Pattaya.  I got to visit their gym and meet PJJ and her family a few days ago and got to actually go and train with the kids this past Monday. While en route on the big highway that runs through Pattaya and connects my two gyms, I was weaving between cars to sneak up

Apollonius - Boxer at Rest Toughnes

The Fragility of Western Masculinity

Some of the questions raised by this article were followed up here: Do Women have a Commitment Advantage in Muay Thai This post also lead to me writing about the Myth of Overtraining and how Endurance is a Skill. There’s a type of dude who frequently appears in the gym in Thailand, looking to fight in Muay Thai.  Usually these guys already have a few fights under their belts and are in close-to-fighting-shape.  I specify that they’re “close to” fighting shape because these guys rarely identify themselves as being already in shape, or where they would want to be to

Freedom and Personal Power - Muay Thai

Body Conscious – Finding Freedom and Personal Power

After struggling out of my wet sports bra, I stood in front of Kevin who was lying on the bed and waved my hands around animatedly while regaling him with the stories of evening training. I slipped off the rest of my clothes as I laughed about clinching, probably with a string of cuss words flowing out as I recounted the events. “Jesus,” Kevin said, looking at me, “I should take a picture.” I was feeling pretty good, do it, I said and kept talking. So Kevin snapped a few photos of my body before I disappeared into the shower, just

Tom and Dee Confrontation - Thailand - BTS 2

A Tom and Dee Scolded on the BTS – A Breaking Point of Thai Norms

The Coconuts Bangkok translation and paraphrase: Woman: Oh, I’m sorry. This is a public venue. Aren’t you shameless, snuggling up to each other like that? Tom: So if you see farangs doing that, do you yell at them too? Woman: Then it’s the farangs’ business. Tom: So why do you discriminate? Woman: Well, they don’t do it on the BTS. I don’t discriminate. Thai tradition, you know. I warned you because I want the best for you. Rejecting the logic that only foreigners are off the hook and can do whatevs, the tom tells the woman to keep her lecturing

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